What’s this about cosmic rays and global warming?

This old argument is getting another airing among the internet climate change contrarian/denier ghetto. Briefly it claims that humans have nothing to do with current climate change – it’s all caused by the sun! Specifically the influence of cosmic rays originating from the sun on formation of clouds in the atmosphere.

The reasearch findings in no way justifies these headlines. And even veteran denier Richard Treadgold at Climate Conversations has backed away to some extent from his headline. Nevertheless it ahs him demanding that New Zealand review its Emmisions Trading Scheme and he thinks that “warmists” are responding by “rushing to the exits”!

What are the research findings?

Another brief video, starring Jasper Kirkby the lead scientists in this work, also provides more information on this work Kirkby on Cosmic Rays

As Kirkby points out the work is only the first step in this research and says nothing about the influence of cosmic rays on cloud formation. This initial work really only reports the influence of chemicals and cosmic rays on nucleation of chemical particles which may eventually lead to some cloud formation.

It’s certainly interesting research, but only one step in considering climatic effects. We still have a long way to go to understand how clouds and other aerosols influence climate change.

And it is the nature of research that we should be ready for all sorts of tangential leads produced. For example, perhaps this research may in the end say more about the influence of human activities on climate through the emission of all sorts of chemicals not yet considered and their role in cosmic ray induced particulate formation in the atmosphere.

The denier ghetto has come out with headlines like New CERN “CLOUD” Study Makes the Al Gore Climate Change Forecasts Obsolete!

Yeah because Al Gore controls NASA and the AGU and all the rest of ’em like some real life Dr Evil. The diabolical all-powerful mastermind behind the global scientific conspiracy. A puppet-master so brilliant that he created the global climate change hoax even before he was, y’know, born.
Now that’s clever.
That’s a neat trick.
Anybody that can pull a stunt like that DESERVES to grab your precious bodily fluids and yer tax dollars.
Morons.
Climate denialism: Making 9/11 troofers look good by comparison.

It never ceases to amaze me in regard to the subject of climate change, that some seem prepared to carry on grasping at what ever new straw they can find, or are feed, in order to deny the science, even when it has been demonstrated, over and over again, that they have been deceived in the past. Some people just can’t tell or care when they are being taken for a sucker.

WTF?
This is some new information that has changed the parameters of climate science. This is how science works. New theories come along, they get tested and the existing theories either get adjusted or tossed out.

that’s a bit of a touchy reply Mick. Perhaps the shoe fits.
If I recall correctly the first thing you did when the topic came up was to provide a link to a denier website, full of rhetoric about warmists.
Don’t make us laugh with your faux indignation.

Mick’s comment “This is some new information that has changed the parameters of climate science really shows the idiocy of the denier approach.

The researchers themselves say that no such conclusions can be drawn and that it will be 10 years before there is even a possibility of contributing to our actual understanding of cloud formation and being able to model this.

I think commenters who behave that way are clearly not skeptics, the are deniers and will grab at anything.

This is some new information that has changed the parameters of climate science.

No. The science behind climate change is as solid as ever. The climate denier blogs ran with hysterical headlines and the faithful nodded their collective heads dumbly and went along.
They don’t fact check. They don’t know how.

Take yourself for example. Did you go straight to primary sources of information the instant the shocking and amazing headlines broke?
Nope.
The thought didn’t occur to you.

It’s not something you are used to doing. It’s a novelty for you. It is with all climate deniers. Looking back, can you think of a single climate denier talking point that you picked up from the internet over the years that can be supported only by primary sources? Not ten or five or two talking points, just one?
It doesn’t happen. It’s all spin. Every single time.

It’s all about middlemen putting themselves between the scientific communities that do the actual work and a gullible public that doesn’t think very hard about exactly where it’s getting it’s information from. Middlemen that tell climate deniers what they already are predisposed to believe and what slogans to mindlessly shout out. The work that science has demanded all along and continues to demand is sidelined.

You fell for the CERN talking point because you failed to look at primary sources.
I didn’t.
You fell for the NASA/aliens story because you failed to look at primary sources.
I didn’t.

The veracity of those two talking points are not some faulty exception; they are the standard that all the climate denier blogs subscribe too. They are all equally worthless.

All I hear from you lot is this quasi-religious BS about “deniers”

No, that won’t do. Science is not a religion-not even a little bit. Science is not a “belief” system. There are no high priests, no churches, no dogma, no revelation and no heretics or Inquisition. NASA (for example) is not a cult. Nice try though as slipping in a little pejorative language. Very dishonest.All I hear from you lot is this quasi-religious BS about “deniers”

Deniers exist. They are not the same as skeptics.
There really and truly are people who deny the science on a multitude of subjects. It’s not just restricted to climate deniers.
Denialism is a real word to denote a real psychological frame of mind. Deniers do exist. That’s just a fact.
You can be in denial about the death of a loved one. Or be in denial about a substance abuse problem. Or be in denial about the test results from the biopsy that show you have cancer.
Science denialism is the same thing.

Denialism is choosing to deny reality as a way to avoid an uncomfortable truth. “[it] is the refusal to accept an empirically verifiable reality. It is an essentially irrational action that withholds validation of a historical experience or event”.
In science, denialism has been defined as the rejection of basic concepts that are undisputed and well-supported parts of the scientific consensus on a topic in favor of ideas that are both radical and controversial. It has been proposed that the various forms of denialism have the common feature of the rejection of overwhelming evidence and the generation of a controversy through attempts to deny that a consensus exist. The terms Holocaust denialism and AIDS denialism have been used, and the term climate change denialists has been applied to those who refuse to accept that climate change is occurring. Several motivations for denial have been proposed, including religious beliefs and self-interest, or as a psychological defense mechanism against disturbing ideas.

Go ahead and take your favourite climate denier talking point. Choose the best and the easiest to support. Now ditch the opinion pieces of the middlemen that fed you the talking point in the first place and go direct to primary sources of information.
The talking point will fail. Each and every time. Without middlemen, it wilts like a hothouse flower taken out of it’s carefully controlled atmospheric environment.
In contrast, the reality-based community have NASA and every single scientific community on the planet in our back pocket.

Have you read any of Svensmark’s theories Ken? Would you classify him as a “denier”?

There truly is nothing new under the sun.
(sigh)
Have you read any of Peter Duesberg’s theories Ken? Would you classify him as a “denier”?
Have you read any of Andrew Wakefields’ theories Ken? Would you classify him as a “denier”?
Have you read any of William Dembski’s theories Ken? Would you classify him as a “denier”?
Have you read any of Bill Kaysing’s theories Ken? Would you classify him as a “denier”?
Have you read any of David Irving’s theories Ken? Would you classify him as a “denier”?
Have you read any of Rupert Sheldrake’s theories Ken? Would you classify him as a “denier”?
Yep. Standard fare for a science denier. Creationists do the same thing for the same reason.

It sounds like a conspiracy theory: ‘cosmic rays’ from deep space might be creating clouds in Earth’s atmosphere and changing the climate. Yet an experiment at CERN, Europe’s high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, is finding tentative evidence for just that.

The findings, published today in Nature1, are preliminary, but they are stoking a long-running argument over the role of radiation from distant stars in altering the climate.

For a century, scientists have known that charged particles from space constantly bombard Earth. Known as cosmic rays, the particles are mostly protons blasted out of supernovae. As the protons crash through the planet’s atmosphere, they can ionize volatile compounds, causing them to condense into airborne droplets, or aerosols. Clouds might then build up around the droplets.

The number of cosmic rays that reach Earth depends on the Sun. When the Sun is emitting lots of radiation, its magnetic field shields the planet from cosmic rays. During periods of low solar activity, more cosmic rays reach Earth.

Scientists agree on these basic facts, but there is far less agreement on whether cosmic rays can have a large role in cloud formation and climate change. Since the late 1990s, some have suggested that when high solar activity lowers levels of cosmic rays, that in turn reduces cloud cover and warms the planet. Others say that there is no statistical evidence for such an effect.

Polarizing lens

“People are far too polarized, and in my opinion there are huge, important areas where our understanding is poor at the moment,” says Jasper Kirkby, a physicist at CERN. In particular, he says, little controlled research has been done on exactly what effect cosmic rays can have on atmospheric chemistry.

To find out, Kirkby and his team are bringing the atmosphere down to Earth in an experiment called Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets (CLOUD). The team fills a custom-built chamber with ultrapure air and chemicals believed to seed clouds: water vapour, sulphur dioxide, ozone and ammonia. They then bombard the chamber with protons from the same accelerator that feeds the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle smasher. As the synthetic cosmic rays stream in, the group carefully samples the artificial atmosphere to see what effect the rays are having.

Early results seem to indicate that cosmic rays do cause a change. The high-energy protons seemed to enhance the production of nanometre-sized particles from the gaseous atmosphere by more than a factor of ten. But, Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,” he says.

Scientists on both sides of the debate (That’s deniers too, Ken) welcome the findings, although they draw differing conclusions. “Of course there are many things to explore, but I think the cosmic-ray/cloud-seeding hypothesis is converging with reality,” says Henrik Svensmark, a physicist at the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen, who claims a link between climate change and cosmic rays.
Others disagree. The CLOUD experiment is “not firming up the connection”, counters Mike Lockwood, a space and environmental physicist at the University of Reading, UK, who is sceptical. Lockwood says that the small particles may not grow fast enough or large enough to be important in comparison with other cloud-forming processes in the atmosphere.

“I think it’s an incredibly worthwhile and overdue experiment,” says Piers Forster, a climatologist at the University of Leeds, UK, who studied the link between cosmic rays and climate for the latest scientific assessment by the International Panel on Climate Change. But for now at least, he says that the experiment “probably raises more questions than it answers”.

Kirkby hopes that the experiment will eventually answer the cosmic-ray question. In the coming years, he says, his group is planning experiments with larger particles in the chamber, and they hope eventually to generate artificial clouds for study. “There is a series of measurements that we will have to do that will take at least five years,” he says. “But at the end of it, we want to settle it one way or the other.”

Mick, your extensive quoting only confirms my point: Eg. “But, Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,” he says.”

Now thus is a long way from your assertion: “This is some new information that has changed the parameters of climate science.”

Ten years down the track there might be information reliable enough to include in climate models. On the other hand the relevant data may have more to do with other chemicals emitted by human activity as I suggest.

The “parameters of climate science” have not moved one bit with the publication of this paper, despite it’s interesting findings.

Ken, these guys are called “scientists”. They have done an “experiment” in a highly precise lab that shows that there may be potentially a link between cosmic rays and climate change. They hope to undertake further research.

I don’t know if there is much more I can add really. I certainly didn’t say it “disproves” “global warming” (whatever that is) or anything like that. I don’t even remember providing a link to a “denier” site that was “full of rhetoric about warmists”.

But the fact remains that these published results don’t change a thing about current understanding in climate science – let alone produce a paradigm change. Your failure to support your initial claim underlines that.

After all – we have known about the influence of ionizing radiation for ages. My physics teacher at high school in the late 50s built a Wilson Cloud Chamber and we saw this effect in practice.

The Nature paper hasn’t itself added to that. Except to indicate that our understanding of what gases are responsible for initial particulate formation need revising. That’s why I suggest we may in future use this sort of data to improve estimates of other human produced chemicals on climate and clouds.

You are desperate to imply those taking a rational approach to this work here are in any way suggesting “nothing will change our understanding” if climate science. I think those people support the current investment in climate research.

It is people like you who have tried to imply that investment is wasted and that scientists cannot be trusted.

Mick – “My point is, how the hell can we understand the human influence on climate if we don’t understand the natural influence on climate. “

True – and who the hell is trying to do that? You are crazy to even imply someone is.

You should spend some time reading the IPCC reports. The current conclusion is based on this understanding. The problem is that we cannot explain the temperature increases over the last 50 years unless man-made inputs are included.

So – you think that the CERN work should not have been funded? Is this view a result of being shown that the data doesn’t fit your denial necessity?

Do you accept that current increase in global temperature over past 40 or 50 years is very likely due to human influence?

Do you have a reference for that? Primary sources, not IPCC summary for policymakers.

Maybe you could also dig out the reference that explains the warming in the earlier part of the 20th Century, and the one that explains why there has been no warming for the last 10 years or so, that explains why ocean heat content is static or declining, and why sea level rise is either static or actually decreasing.

Here’s a question for you guys. When Ban Ki Moon tells us that Kiribati and Tuvalu are being inundated by “sea level rise caused by climate change”, do you agree that he is an “anti-science” denialist?

After all, there is no evidence for this, and Darwin’s theory is that coral atolls rise with sea levels anyway.

I was being more general. I wasn’t meaning the precise mathematical sense. as in a parameter to a function

So what did you mean? What definition were you using? Or were you using your own private English language?

Oh I forgot, you can’t tax those, so it’s difficult to get funding from the gubmint…

Behold the global scientific conspiracy. All powerful and all encompassing…and yet mysteriously undetectable. You know it’s there. “They” can’t fool you. You know the fix is in. Yet you just can’t demonstrate it using evidence. Those durned scientists have covered their tracks perfectly all these decades!
Oh dear.

Another common conspiratorial attack on consensus science (without data) is that science is just some old-boys club (not saying it’s entirely free of it but…) and we use peer-review to silence dissent. This is a frequent refrain of HIV/AIDS denialists like Dean Esmay or Global Warming denialists like Richard Lindzen trying to explain why mainstream scientists won’t publish their BS. The fact is that good science speaks for itself, and peer-reviewers are willing to publish things that challenge accepted facts if the data are good. If you’re just a denialist cherry-picking data and nitpicking the work of others, you’re out of luck. Distribution of scientific funding (another source of conspiracy from denialists) is similarly based on novelty and is not about repeating some kind of party line. Yes, it’s based on study-sections and peer-review of grants, but the idea that the only studies that get funded are ones that affirm existing science is nuts, if anything it’s the opposite.

Lately, there’s been a lot of criticism of the excess focus on novelty in distribution of funding and in what gets accepted into journals. I encourage all scientists and those interested in science to watch this video of John Ioannidis giving grand rounds at NIH on how science gets funded, published, and sadly, often proven wrong. I put it up at google video. He is the author of “Why most published research findings are false” published in PLoS last year. It’s proof that science is perfectly willing to be critical of itself, more than happy to publish exceptional things that often turn out wrong, but ultimately, highly self-correcting.
(From “Denialism Blog”)

I know it’s getting a bit off-topic track a bit but the whole crazies/troofers/tea-party/birthers/climate science denial etc in the USA thing is all interrelated.

I read that article when it first came out. Creepy. Homeschooled religious nutjobs running the most powerful country on Earth.
The way you adopt one conspiracy theory is the way you adopt them all. The thinking is often exactly the same.

The fact is that other than a few anecdotes tossed about the [Climate] Denialosphere there is no attempt to actually document the conspiracy. Why not? There are any number of ways that evidence could be provided. Grant guidelines and terms of reference could be offered and their bias revealed. Statistics could be generated on what research is funded to demonstrate bias, and so on.

Looking for clues
It is fascinating that the Deniers invest almost no energy into documenting the alleged conspiracies. Most conspiracists obsess on gathering evidence. They watch videos over and over, study floor plans and forensic reports, plot trajectories and lines of sight, read and compare testimonies of witnesses endlessly, post youtube videos explaining byzantine timelines and event sequences. Their obsession with documenting evidence is almost pathological. Indeed there is a process to validating a conspiracy.

Yet the Deniers toss out a few anecdotes and move on. Why?
The most obvious reason would be that it can’t be done. Any critical examination of the evidence naturally causes the whole premise to fall apart. As I will discuss below the whole idea is absurd. In fact it is probable that the authors of the theories know them to be nonsense so they are not going to waste their time looking for evidence that they know does not exist.

More importantly, from their perspective it isn’t necessary, not for it’s intended purpose. What is a conspiracy theory for and who is the audience? If your purpose is to stop or destroy the conspiracy then you must expose it to the public and the appropriate authorities. If your intended audience does not require convincing and the purpose is merely to sow confusion then evidence and facts are unnecessary.

The audience for the Denier conspiracy theories do not require evidence. As has been demonstrated over and over the Deniers accept the most outrageous nonsense as fact on the basis of hearsay. The popular media will publish almost any Denier nonsense under the rubric of “balance”, so evidence is wasted on them. Merely invoking the theory accomplishes the intended purpose, so why bother with evidence?

Then you can no doubt explain the nuts and bolts of the global scientific conspiracy…without the need for a conspiracy.
Go for it.
No one will censor you or send the black helicopters after you. Honest!
Give us a rational, mundane rundown on “they” do it.
Put some distance between yourself and the crazies.

He wriggles. He squirms.
🙂
Come on Mick. Don’t be shy.
What’s “happening”?
How are “they” doing it?
Nobody’s going to censor you here. Far from it. Give us the details as you see ’em. Enlighten us. Reveal all!

Or maybe, it’s all part of the conspiracy?
Imagine Mick hidden away in some secret bunker somewhere. He risks his life every minute he is on the internet.

“They” are after him.
He knows what’s going on. Oh yes. He is determined to expose the global scientific hoax.
Yet “they” have a secret weapon. A mind-control device that activates any time a whistleblower tries to spill the beans on what is really “happening”.
The fiends!
He sits down to type…and yet he can’t…the precious details are all there in his head…but he can’t physically type out the words.
Curses!!
Perhaps there’s even secret fake memory implant that activates? One that seduces him into thinking that he didn’t want to reveal what he knows anyway?
Hmm.

At yet, it wasn’t his rationalization at all. It was the fake memory implant.
And so, the details are never revealed on the Internet for all to see.
And so, the global scientific conspiracy remains all powerful and yet completely unseen.
Spooky stuff.

Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did not renew it because I can not live with the statement below:

Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.

The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.
If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.

In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.

So what did you mean, Mick. What’s happening? How does it happen?
Wriggle and squirm, Mick. Wriggle and squirm.

Yet the Deniers toss out a few anecdotes and move on. Why?
The most obvious reason would be that it can’t be done. Any critical examination of the evidence naturally causes the whole premise to fall apart. As I will discuss below the whole idea is absurd. In fact it is probable that the authors of the theories know them to be nonsense so they are not going to waste their time looking for evidence that they know does not exist.

More importantly, from their perspective it isn’t necessary, not for it’s intended purpose. What is a conspiracy theory for and who is the audience? If your purpose is to stop or destroy the conspiracy then you must expose it to the public and the appropriate authorities. If your intended audience does not require convincing and the purpose is merely to sow confusion then evidence and facts are unnecessary.

The audience for the Denier conspiracy theories do not require evidence. As has been demonstrated over and over the Deniers accept the most outrageous nonsense as fact on the basis of hearsay. The popular media will publish almost any Denier nonsense under the rubric of “balance”, so evidence is wasted on them. Merely invoking the theory accomplishes the intended purpose, so why bother with evidence?

This is the conspiracy I was referring to. The one that Richard implied.
It’s all interrelated – it’s a conspiracy!

No, that’s not what he implied.
English comprehension fail. How sad.
(And how very squirmy)
Conspiracy theories are interrelated because they all spring from the same line of thinking. It’s very easy to compare any of the major conspiracies and notice strong similarities.
Scratch a climate denier and it’s very easy to find a troofer.
Scratch a creationist and it’s very easy to find a climate denier.
Scratch a Birther and it’s very easy to find a creationist and a climate denier.
The mentality is the same. They all have the same low standards of evidence. They are all suckers for the same reasons.

Clearly, mind control central (Rick Perry’s Bat Cave) have taken over the minds of the homeschoolers and fundamentalists.

American fundies often get the way they are because they are homeschooled. There’s a very strong overlap in the States. Educational incest. They are not exactly the best and the brightest.
If your education is stunted enough to accept creationism then you are primed and ready to accept climate denialism and any other paranoid conspiracy nonsense that comes along.

Ok.
State your position on climate change in the most logical and reasonable manner that you can.
Give it your best shot.
Can you do it without sounding like a conspiracy theorist?

The fact is that other than a few anecdotes tossed about the [Climate] Denialosphere there is no attempt to actually document the conspiracy. Why not? There are any number of ways that evidence could be provided. Grant guidelines and terms of reference could be offered and their bias revealed. Statistics could be generated on what research is funded to demonstrate bias, and so on.

Looking for clues
It is fascinating that the Deniers invest almost no energy into documenting the alleged conspiracies. Most conspiracists obsess on gathering evidence. They watch videos over and over, study floor plans and forensic reports, plot trajectories and lines of sight, read and compare testimonies of witnesses endlessly, post youtube videos explaining byzantine timelines and event sequences. Their obsession with documenting evidence is almost pathological. Indeed there is a process to validating a conspiracy.

Yet the Deniers toss out a few anecdotes and move on. Why?
The most obvious reason would be that it can’t be done. Any critical examination of the evidence naturally causes the whole premise to fall apart. As I will discuss below the whole idea is absurd. In fact it is probable that the authors of the theories know them to be nonsense so they are not going to waste their time looking for evidence that they know does not exist.

More importantly, from their perspective it isn’t necessary, not for it’s intended purpose. What is a conspiracy theory for and who is the audience? If your purpose is to stop or destroy the conspiracy then you must expose it to the public and the appropriate authorities. If your intended audience does not require convincing and the purpose is merely to sow confusion then evidence and facts are unnecessary.

The audience for the Denier conspiracy theories do not require evidence. As has been demonstrated over and over the Deniers accept the most outrageous nonsense as fact on the basis of hearsay. The popular media will publish almost any Denier nonsense under the rubric of “balance”, so evidence is wasted on them. Merely invoking the theory accomplishes the intended purpose, so why bother with evidence?

That’s a conspiracy. Follow through with that line of reasoning. It leads you straight down the global conspiracy rabbit hole just like the creationists and the troofers.

Test it for yourself. Can you do anything more than toss out a few anecdotes and move on?

This is your rather vague claim:

Sure, I don’t believe the current state of climate science represents a fair and accurate view of the science because it has been skewed by government funding and activist lobby groups
(…)
Attach “climate change”, or a nod to AGW in your research proposal, you get funded, otherwise you don’t.

That’s a conspiracy. There’s no other way to describe it.

“The government” and “activists” have skewed the science.
(Somehow)
“They” won’t fund you if you don’t do what they want.
(Somehow)

How does “The government” actually do this? What government? All of them?
How is it possible to skew the science without leaving any evidence?

“The conclusions of scientists are motivated by scientists’ pay; they cannot be considered objective.
Response:
1. Scientists get rewarded for overthrowing currently accepted ideas (if they can do so with evidence) and for proposing new theories that lead to new research. Any bias from material gain would be against the accepted theory of evolution.
2. Many research scientists could make more money in industry. They do science because they enjoy it.
3. The complaint applies equally to anti-evolutionists.”
________________________________________

Attach “climate change”, or a nod to AGW in your research proposal, you get funded, otherwise you don’t.

Scientists are pressured not to challenge the established dogma.
Source:
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. 1985. Life–How Did It Get Here? Brooklyn, NY, p. 182.
Response:
1. The pressures that science imposes do not weaken the validity of evolution — quite the contrary. Scientists are rewarded more for finding new things, not for supporting established principles. Thus, they tend to look more for novelties and for results that would overturn common beliefs. If a scientist found evidence that falsified evolution, he or she would be guaranteed world prestige and fame.
2. Creationists are under far more pressure than scientists. Since their entire world view is threatened by finding disconfirming evidence, they are very highly motivated not to admit it. Many creationists have taken oaths saying that no evidence could change their dogma (AIG n.d.). At least one admits that he became a scientist not to find the truth, but to destroy Darwinism (Wells n.d.). The commitment to established dogma is pretty well monopolized by creationists.”

Yes I do know that I am wasting time trying to argue with you.
You asked me for my opinion and I gave it.

Your opinion is totally unsupported. It’s pure handwaving.
None of my questions are unfair. They are very basic questions.
Should be a doddle for you to answer.

Which government is skewing the the funding? Name it.
The Australian government?
Or did you mean the US government?
Or both? Oh, goody! Did you mean both? Are they both working together? Please say that they are.
What about the Chinese?
Is it the Chinese and the Australian and the US governments?
What about the German government? Is it in on it too?
The Chinese, Australian, US and German governments all trying to “corrupt the science”?
Are there more?
Maybe, just maybe,….(gasp)… it’s all the governments on the planet? Just how big is the conspiracy?Yes I do know that I am wasting time trying to argue with you.
You asked me for my opinion and I gave it.

That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence- Christopher Hitchins

You could try the Spencer and Braswell paper for a start. it eventually got published but the editor resigned and apologised to Trenberth, yet the paper was not retracted.
Dessler issued a rebuttal in rather speedy time, yet this has been shown to be full of holes (it doesn’t even use official IPCC temp records)

Another example would be Lindzen and Choi that took years to get published.

Of course, there are the famous emails in which Phil Jones said he would “redefine what the peer-reviewed literature” is.

Then there is the NIWA case where an NZ group has shown that NIWA did not follow there own peer-reviewed best practice, and over-inflated the temperature record for the 20th C

CSIRO had a similar audit I think, with similar results.

Then there is the Steig et al paper on Antarctica which was also shown to have been pal-reviewed. The critique by Jeff Id et al eventually got published but not after a fight.

You could try the Spencer and Braswell paper(..)Another example would be Lindzen and Choi..(…)Of course, there are the famous emails in which Phil Jones said he would “redefine what the peer-reviewed literature” is.Then there is the NIWA case where an NZ group has shown that NIWA did not follow there own peer-reviewed best practice, and over-inflated the temperature record for the 20th C. CSIRO had a similar audit I think, with similar results. Then there is the Steig et al paper on Antarctica…

All you are offering are anecdotes.

The fact is that other than a few anecdotes tossed about the [Climate] Denialosphere there is no attempt to actually document the conspiracy. Why not? There are any number of ways that evidence could be provided. Grant guidelines and terms of reference could be offered and their bias revealed. Statistics could be generated on what research is funded to demonstrate bias, and so on.

You have not shown that any of this is related to any government or agency doing anything wrong.
Papers can be rejected. Happens all the time. No government involvement needed.
People say stuff in emails. Happens all the time. No government involvement needed.
Scientists even make mistakes and find out about it later. Happens all the time. No government involvement needed.
Even by taking all your anecdotes on faith alone, anecdotes are not evidence of corruption or collusion or conspiracy.
Your claim does not stand. You are no different from any other denier or conspiracy theorist out there.
Here is your claim again:

Sure, I don’t believe the current state of climate science represents a fair and accurate view of the science because it has been skewed by government funding and activist lobby groups
(…)
Attach “climate change”, or a nod to AGW in your research proposal, you get funded, otherwise you don’t. It is corruption and collusion…

Which governments are in on it? Why is this such a spooky question for you? Reveal all.

“Then there is the NIWA case where an NZ group has shown that NIWA did not follow there own peer-reviewed best practice, and over-inflated the temperature record for the 20th C.”

We have followed this saga here in depth. I also have an interesting collection of email correspondence with this denier group (I could provide a link tomorrow I you are interested). They were caught out luring about the extent their paper was reviewed, they refuse to credit the “science team” they claim to have (strange that) and they refuse to make their data or workings available.

The group has consistently lied and slandered our NZ scientists (mind you that would appeal to you). The ACT party and their backers in the NZ right wing think tank are complicit.

If you had followed this at all objectively you would not want to be associated with the claim you make. But then of course you are on record as refusing to accept anything a scientist produced but are happy to accept what these politicians offer you – purely because they are conservative.

Mick , are you willing to read through my email correspondence with this group.? Let me know. I can post a link to the file tomorrow (not at my PC till then).

Come on – give yourself a chance to experience some lies and anger from your political idols!

Probably Agenda 21 was the starting point. Like I say, I am not a conspiracy theorist, but there was a definite timeline for this “movement”…

So there is a “movement” and it’s got something to do with something called Agenda 21…but you are not a conspiracy theorist?
Okay.
So….um…..a definite timeline? Wonderful. At last some concrete details.
When and where did it start?

Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment.

Very spooky.
So that’s the start of the timeline, right? 14 June 1992?

Either there is a definite time line or there is not.
Make up your mind.
You know there’s a definite time line because you’ve seen the dates, right?
Otherwise, how could you possibly know one way or the other?

You like to back someone into a corner over some “conspiracy” stuff and then “expose” them as a kook.

Even the most simple questions lead inevitably to kooky conspiracy theories.
So far, we have dozens of governments involved. There a definite timeline involved (or maybe now there is not?). Agenda 21 figures into it somehow. There ‘s some sort of a “movement” but no details are forthcoming.
Not much in the way of detail.

You can bleat all you like that “it won’t change the science”. I don’t care.

Yet you are convinced that “Sure, I don’t believe the current state of climate science represents a fair and accurate view of the science because it has been skewed by government funding and activist lobby groups
(…)
Attach “climate change”, or a nod to AGW in your research proposal, you get funded, otherwise you don’t. It is corruption and collusion…”

If there is wrong doing by the governements of the world to skew the science, then how?
When? 1992, 2002? Or do we have to go back? 1982, 1972? Was there ever a time when the science wasn’t magically skewed by “the governement”? If so, then it should be easy to compare the research proposals from then as opposed to now. Same goes for suspicious “behind closed doors” government funding or some other kind of hanky-panky from “the movement”.
At one point, “the movement” did not exist, right? Just how long has the movement been getting away with their crimes? 15 years? 25 years? 50 years? 100 years?

Yes I do know that I am wasting time trying to argue with you.
You asked me for my opinion and I gave it.(…) All very tiresome(…)Of course, guys, I am fully aware of this little “game” you like to play. You like to back someone into a corner over some “conspiracy” stuff and then “expose” them as a kook. Personally, I am not interested.(…)You can bleat all you like that “it won’t change the science”. I don’t care.

“Yeah” thinks mind-controlled Mick. “I won’t tell ‘em. They don’t deserve it. They’d only think my explanation was poorly thought out cheesy paranoia with no supporting evidence whatsoever. They’d call me a kook!”
At yet, it wasn’t his rationalization at all. It was the fake memory implant.
And so, the details are never revealed on the Internet for all to see.
And so, the global scientific conspiracy remains all powerful and yet completely unseen.
Spooky stuff.

Big Science is a term used by scientists and historians of science to describe a series of changes in science which occurred in industrial nations during and after World War II, as scientific progress increasingly came to rely on large-scale projects usually funded by national governments or groups of governments.[1] Individual or small group efforts, or Small Science, is still relevant today as theoretical results by individual authors may have a significant impact, but very often the empirical verification requires experiments using constructions, such as the Large Hadron Collider costing between $5 and $10 billionWhile science and technology have always been important to and driven by warfare, the increase in military funding of science following the second World War was on a scale wholly unprecedented. World War II has often been called “the physicists’ war” for the role that those scientists played in the development of new weapons and tools, notably the proximity fuze, radar, and the atomic bomb. The bulk of these last two activities took place in a new form of research facility: the government-sponsored laboratory, employing thousands of technicians and scientists, managed by universities (in this case, the University of California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

In the shadow of the first atomic weapons, the importance of a strong scientific research establishment was apparent to any country wishing to play a major role in international politics. After the success of the Manhattan Project, governments became the chief patron of science, and the character of the scientific establishment underwent several key changes. This was especially marked in the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, but also to a lesser extent in many other countries.

“Big Science” usually implies one or more of these specific characteristics:

Big budgets: No longer required to rely on philanthropy or industry, scientists were able to use budgets on an unprecedented scale for basic research.
Big staffs: Similarly, the number of practitioners of science on any one project grew as well, creating difficulty, and often controversy, in the assignment of credit for scientific discoveries (the Nobel Prize system, for example, allows awarding only three individuals in any one topic per year, based on a 19th-century model of the scientific enterprise).
Big machines: Ernest Lawrence’s cyclotron at his Radiation Laboratory in particular ushered in an era of massive machines (requiring massive staffs and budgets) as the tools of basic scientific research. The use of many machines, such as the many sequencers used during the Human Genome Project, might also fall under this definition..

Enormous superconducting synchrotron particle accelerators with circumferences of many kilometers are the exemplars of Big Science. Shown above is the Fermilab Tevatron.

Big laboratories: Because of the increase in cost to do basic science (with the increase of large machines), centralization of scientific research in large laboratories (such as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory or CERN) has become a cost-effective strategy, though questions over facility access have become prevalent.

Where are the big machines Janet?
or the big Laboratories full of zombie staff, all loyal to the cause?

Read your “emails” Ken. Yawn. I have had more fun watching a tap dripping.
Where, exactly, is the scandal? And pleeeeeze don’t try to compare your “scandal” with climate gate. This little NZ group is not getting millions in govt funding and influencing billions of $$ in govt policy is it?

1 They know they sound stupid under any reasoned analysis and most people view their viewpoint as being fringe and/or mostly held by nutjobs.
2 It protects their professional, social standing from being contaminated by their viewpoints.
3 Internet anonymity allows them to be boldly irresponsible .

Now, now! Take a deep breath and try not to sound like an angry, frustrated kook.
Remember, you are the sucker that believes that dozens of governments are doing something to “the science”. That there’s a movement with a timeline and that the UN is somehow involved or whatever.
Oops.

There was a time when science wasn’t primarily funded by government. I think it was maybe funded by benefactors or individuals.

You think? Oh.

What happened to the…definite timeline for this “movement”…?

Doesn’t sound so very definite at the moment.
Hmm.

How much has been spent on climate science? $100 billion is the estimate I heard. Who pays for this? The tooth fairy?

What’s your point, oh-slow-witted one? This is the same argument used by deniers of all stripes.
It’s just idle slander. You have no evidence. Yet evidence would be easy to get if it was true.
The creationists use this hackneyed arguement. The anti-vaxxers use it. The HIV deniers use it. Even the moon-landing deniers use it. And…you use it. You use it all the time.

Sure, I don’t believe the current state of climate science represents a fair and accurate view of the science because it has been skewed by government funding and activist lobby groups(…) It is corruption and collusion….

Sounds oddly familiar somehow. Now who else talks like this? Oh yes, now I remember…

They know they sound stupid under any reasoned analysis and most people view their viewpoint as being fringe and/or mostly held by nutjobs.(…)Internet anonymity allows them to be boldly irresponsible .
So his friends and family might not know about his antics or his beliefs?
Ah, I understand him better now. Disturbing. Let’s hope he doesn’t behave like this in real life. That would be unfortunate for them.

So you don’t think there is a “green/environmental” movement? You think that all these “honest scientists” spontaneously started agreeing with each other about greenhouse gas emissions? You don’t think that when Dr Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, described the organisation he created as “anti-intellectual, anti-science, and ultimately anti-human”, that he had lost his marbles?

John Wakelin, whatever I think or don’t think doesn’t help you.
(shrug)
This is all about you spilling the beans on the conspiracy. I wouldn’t dream of interfering.
This is all about you.

Remember your claim. Tell us how it works.

“Sure, I don’t believe the current state of climate science represents a fair and accurate view of the science because it has been skewed by government funding and activist lobby groups
(…)
Attach “climate change”, or a nod to AGW in your research proposal, you get funded, otherwise you don’t. It is corruption and collusion…”

So how?
HOW?
This can’t be that difficult a question for you. The advantage is all yours. You know about the governments involved. You know about the definite timeline of “the movement”. You know about Agenda 21. You know that the science is being skewed.
You clearly have the facts at your fingertips.
All you have to do is explain how “they” do it in a reasonable and logical manner that doesn’t make you sound like a delusional kook.
Break it down for us into simple, non-paranoid mundane steps.

You think that all these “honest scientists” spontaneously started agreeing with each other about greenhouse gas emissions?

Does this figure in with your “definite timeline”?
Good. Give us the details.
Compare the time when climate scientists definitely weren’t corrupted by dozens of governments and the as-yet-undefined “movement” to the present era of corruption. What’s happening now that didn’t happen sometime back then thats clear evidence of corruption and hanky-panky goings on.

John Wakelin, whatever I think or don’t think doesn’t help you.
(shrug)
This is all about you spilling the beans on the conspiracy. I wouldn’t dream of interfering.
This is all about you.

Remember your claim. Tell us how it works.

“Sure, I don’t believe the current state of climate science represents a fair and accurate view of the science because it has been skewed by government funding and activist lobby groups
(…)
Attach “climate change”, or a nod to AGW in your research proposal, you get funded, otherwise you don’t. It is corruption and collusion…”

So how?
HOW?
This can’t be that difficult a question for you. The advantage is all yours. You know about the governments involved. You know about the definite timeline of “the movement”. You know about Agenda 21. You know that the science is being skewed.
You clearly have the facts at your fingertips.
All you have to do is explain how “they” do it in a reasonable and logical manner that doesn’t make you sound like a delusional kook.
Break it down for us into simple, non-paranoid mundane steps.

You think that all these “honest scientists” spontaneously started agreeing with each other about greenhouse gas emissions?

Does this figure in with your “definite timeline”?
Good. Give us the details.
Compare the time when climate scientists definitely weren’t corrupted by dozens of governments and the as-yet-undefined “movement” to the present era of corruption. What’s happening now that didn’t happen sometime back then thats clear evidence of corruption and hanky-panky goings on.